


freedom in letters

by justsomerain



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Introspection, Past Abuse, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 11:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17527901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsomerain/pseuds/justsomerain
Summary: Beauregard receives the first letter from her family in over a year. It's freeing, in a way.





	freedom in letters

When she got the letter, Beau hadn’t expected to be affected by it. She had been in the Cobalt Soul Monastery for nearing two years now, with little to no contact from her family. She didn’t necessarily blame them, no matter how much she had kicked and screamed when her father had her taken away to the monastery. She had never been a good child, let alone a good daughter, and he had threatened and threatened to do something about her behaviour. She should have known, really, that he would do something like this, but threats of sending her away had been better than being beaten by him for disobeying him. Not that she hadn’t found her ways to get back at him, starting small, with the siphoning of wine from casks, selling it to shady dealers and smugglers, escalating until her parents would have to notice, would have to pay attention to her.

She hadn’t always been like that. Nobody starts out neck deep in the underworld of wine smugglers and forgery. Once upon a time, she could remember, she had been a good child, her mother dressing her in elaborate dresses, capitalising on her openness to win over clients. After all, a charming child helped a lot when doing business, in setting clients at ease. It was when her father had started getting angry at her growing up, her disinterest in what he had to teach her that she had started acting out. It had started mild, her father admonishing her for shirking her lessons, lamenting that if only she had been a son, he would have had somebody that could easily have inherited. If only he had had a son, perhaps she would have been interested in her lessons, like it was her fault that the tutors hired had had no idea how to handle a young girl more interested in climbing trees and running around than numbers.

It was when she hit puberty that it had started turning bad. The longer her lessons went on, the more Beau had felt like running, no longer content to be dressed up by her mother, and not at all content to be paraded in front of other women, her mother talking about her in an attempt to make her seem like a desirable candidate for their sons. The more she had felt like running, the more she had acted out, and the more her father had threatened, until the night where she had slipped her bedroom window, only to be caught by the estate guard, brought back by the scruff of her collar, cursing a blue streak, and her father had shaken his head, face grim like a thundercloud in his office, where he had beaten her until she was on the ground, telling her that she was to shape up before sending her to be taken to her room.

From that moment on it had just gotten worse, each trespass that was caught on to punished with a beating, and in the end it hadn’t stopped her, it had only made her more resolved to not be caught, to know how to fight back, even if she never did. It had carried on until that moment where she had been called into her father’s office, her resolve steeled against another beating, but instead finding somebody else in the office with her father in blue robes, who had taken her away, her bags already packed with only the most basic of possessions, to the monastery.

In the time since her parents had not as much as deigned check in on her, the only contact a letter in her first year at the monastery with her mother’s wish that she would learn to behave the way she ought to there. Beau hadn’t deigned a response, tearing up the letter, careful not to let tears well up in her eyes. Her mother, who had only ever stood by when her father beat her, who expected better behaviour of her. She would do no such thing, and she had fought extra hard during her next training, teeth gritted as she threw punches that were deftly dodged by her sparring partner.

And now there was this letter, the second in the nearly two years.

She balled one fist, muscles in her jaw working as her eyes scanned the words on the paper over and over. The letter was short, succinct, and deep inside her she could feel emotions warring, a pain behind her eyes rearing its ugly head as she focused on her breathing. Perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps she was free now.

**Author's Note:**

> Getting back into writing through free writing exercises. What is fic for if not projecting your own trauma on other people's characters?


End file.
